


everybody's got something to hide (except me and my monkey)

by Dandybear



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Adultery, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Character Study, Consensual Sex But Still Icky, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Lyra's mom is a scorpio and her dad's a gemini poor thing, Misogyny Does Things To Your Psyche, Postpartum Depression, She has the internal monologue of a serial killer okay, hoo boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21519145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandybear/pseuds/Dandybear
Summary: Marisa reads a story about jealous gods, a king who will bed any woman, animal, or puddle who catches his fancy, and his jealous wife who tears the world apart for it. Then she tells the story of the girl who no one believes. Then she tells the story about the god-king who eats his children so they will never destroy him, only to be destroyed by the inside.//Marisa Coulter character study from girlhood to motherhood.
Relationships: Edward Coulter/Marisa Coulter, Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter
Comments: 31
Kudos: 238





	everybody's got something to hide (except me and my monkey)

**Author's Note:**

> listen, listen. . . I know, I know Marisa/Asriel is a hot pairing but she is much more interesting than her relationship with him. 
> 
> this might be the darkest piece I've published on AO3, and I don't think I really stretched anything from her canon characterization. Anyway, someone on tumblr said they wanted 3k+ character study of Marisa Coulter and I was like "bitch me too, the fuck?" so I went and made it.
> 
> I gave her daemon the name Oberyn as a mash up of Ozymandias (which Pullman hates) and Brian (the puppeteer who plays the golden monkey in the BBC show). Also, he's a meddling Shakespearean DICK.

_I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions._  
_Whatever I see I swallow immediately_  
_Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike._  
_I am not cruel, only truthful,_

_(Mirror - Sylvia Plath)_

_There's never been an endeavor so strange_  
_As trying to slow the blood in my veins_  
_To keep my face blank_  
_As a stone that just sank_  
_Until not a ripple remains_

_(Studying Stones - Ani Difranco)_

* * *

When Marisa is a little girl she finds a tide pool brimming with life. Sea anemones with tentacles that reach up, but hide away when poked. Little fish beneath the sand who squirt jets of water in protest. Sea stars stretched against the rocks. And, of course, tiny crabs scuttling around the sea floor. She finds them more fascinating than her own reflection--dark haired and flat toothed as she cocks her head and digs through the sand. They shy away from her curious fingers, or snap and poke. So, she rips their arms off, first one, then the other. How does it change how they walk? How does it change how they swim? Do they suffer?

What her mother calls a frightening morbidity, and antisocial sadism, Marisa calls the beginnings of her scholarly interest in evolutionary biology.

* * *

When Marisa is a little girl she is set free on the beaches, in her dress--which she ties into pants around her knees, and her daemon, and her sense of adventure.

When Marisa turns ten, she is scrubbed clean and pinned into tight dresses. The kind that restrict movement. And she is forced into shoes, the kind that are too tight on her toes. 

She runs. From her classes at first, disappearing back down the coast and re-emerging wet and sandy, beautiful dress and shoes ruined.

Her mother doesn’t hit her, but she explains calmly that this is an argument she is going to win, while her osprey runs a claw over Oberyn in his delicate monarch butterfly form.

So, she gets used to breathing shallower, standing straighter, and sitting stiff. Knees together, not bouncing against the desk. She learns to be still. At least on the outside.

* * *

Fifteen is late for a daemon to settle, and, each new form might be the one Oberyn sets as. And, Marisa is a lady now, expected to be ladylike, and proper. She needs a daemon that says style, grace, elegance. So, when she suggests that Oberyn change into something like a cat, or an ermine, he turns into a silverback gorilla and sits on one hip, teeth bared and daring her to tell him to change.

_ “We are not small. We are not tame, Marisa,”  _ he says.

“The greater power is in being underestimated, B’ryn,” she says through her teeth.

Because men look at a woman’s daemon and decide on her desirability. How meek she is. How easily cowed. How alluring. A butterfly! Delicate, sensitive, fragile. 

_ “I will not be defenseless to soothe some man’s ego,”  _ he turns into a lion and hisses.

She can’t argue, feeling her own temper flare at it all. In an ideal world, she’d be a scholar. Living at the college and disappearing into piles of books. Books about how things are, books about how things were, writing her books about how things could be. How they should be. She could get a pipe and smoking jacket, and ride her bicycle everywhere. She’d drink pints and debate loudly. She’d forgo shoes and manners, and she’d be called Professor van Zee, eccentric. And no one would care if her daemon were a lion or a gorilla.

But, that would mean being a person, and she is not. She is property, meant to look dazzling, and then be sold to the highest bidder.

_ “How about this?”  _ Oberyn asks. She turns to find him an ornate crab. His blue shell curves and dips to make the features of a human face.

“You look ghastly,” she says, sipping her tea.

_ “I match your shoes,”  _ he says with a pinch to the ankle. She aims a kick at him.

(Heads turn when he does settle. When  _ they  _ settle. Marisa Coulter has a monkey daemon. One with a blue face and golden fur, and eyes like hard black stones. And, just like her, the smile is cute and disarming, but any expert on monkeys will tell you to run at the sight it.)

* * *

Sex is like Dust in that nobody is supposed to know about it, and therefore the room goes quiet when it’s brought up. She feigns disinterest, keeping her eyes on her book as a trio of girls across from her whisper and giggle, talking about a boy from the kitchen staff Louisa lost her  _ virginity  _ to.

“Did it hurt?” the girl with the red hair who laughs too loudly asks.

“A little bit at first, and then it just felt good. Weird, but good.”

And this whets Marisa’s appetite for information.

Virginity is a price on the head of a woman such as they. Their value revolves around their virginity. Men want something fresh, unsullied, like snow that hasn’t been stepped in.

Oberyn snarls, tail lashing, betraying her annoyance.

“Did it bleed?” the girl with the uneven teeth asks.

“No, does that mean I wasn’t one before?”

Daphne, the horse girl at the end of the row talks loudly, “Actually, you can break your maidenhead all manner of ways without laying with a man. And, you shouldn’t talk about that so loud.”

Marisa ducks deeper into her book and resolves to join the ranks of women. To know what men are like in those most exposed moments.

It might be the same kitchen boy, at the very least, he knows how to do it without making a girl bleed. His breath stutters against her neck, sour and gross. She furrows her brow, disappointed at the pathetic carnal rutting of it all. This is why wars are fought? So men can mouth breathe as they saw away for a few moments, then roll off.

But, she knows what it’s like now. To be the sullied. To eat the apple and know, there is no great romance to it. 

Professor Stewart is a tall woman with white hair and black glasses who Marisa likes a great deal. Her daemon is a lioness, and she moves with the raw confidence of a man. She’s the person Marisa can ask.

“It’s a performance they want,” she says, pouring some whiskey into her tea, and ignoring Marisa’s look as she pockets the flask, “Men. They always think themselves the teacher and women the student of life. A man would poorly paraphrase your paper back to you before listening to a word from your mouth, Missy, remember that.”

Marisa nods, hungry for this woman’s knowledge as she is for her attention. 

“Just keep a vial of your own blood for the wedding night and play a blushing virgin and he’ll be none the wiser.”

And Marisa bats her lashes and plays with her hair, “I’ve never been with anyone, I’m not sure what to expect.”

Her shoe brushes the knee of Professor Stewart’s slacks. The older woman looks back at her, stone faced. It’s only the nervous energy of her daemon that betrays the inner conflict.

“You’re seventeen, Marisa, you’ve plenty of time to learn. Now, you must excuse me.”

When Marisa returns to the dormitories there is shouting and tears. Louisa is marched out, her parents flanking her. Father with a set jaw, and mother dabbing at her eyes.

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Louisa pleads.

The other girls stand at attention, eyes glazed in their own panic and hands shaking. The suspicion in the room is thick enough to cut with a knife, question hanging like a canopy:  _ who told _ ?

The headmistress addresses the school, saying that it’s a good, godly institute for young girls to become ladies, not harlots or tramps. Such behaviour would not be tolerated. Marisa sits straight, at least on the outside.

* * *

Edward Coulter is boring, egomaniacal, and old. But, his money and breeding give him enough power and influence to choke on.

She intends to do that. Choke him, that is. Once she’s got a safe gap between the wedding and where she’d like to be. Ideally, one child to solidify her inheritance, and a beautiful black dress for the funeral. In the meantime, she laughs through courtship, keeping her legs closed, and her lashes batted.

She shuts off the synapses behind her eyes, laughing and nodding at what  _ Edward  _ says. Attaching herself to  _ Edward’s  _ arm like a fine piece of jewelry, or perhaps a mounted animal. 

It would be foolish to take out a book on exotic poisons, no, she looks at the papers directly, playing up the male fantasy of a scholar with her glasses perched on her nose and her cleavage being aired out. She hopes, perhaps, that some younger, equally powerful lord, with a hard body and wicked tongue will whisk her away from a stuffy engagement to a man she thinks of killing.

(No such man appears. She’s wedded on a Sunday and wears her mother’s dress. And, she smiles, even as the fabric restricts all movements on her starved frame. And, after doing her wifely duties on her wedding night, she slips out of bed and downstairs, where she dissects the clock until she has tiny cuts all over her fingers.)

* * *

He’s two years too late, she decides, at the sight of Lord Asriel Belacqua. Arrogant, brash, and exciting. He is hard lines and kinetic energy. His daemon, a snow leopard whose tail lashes back and forth, keeping her eyes on Oberyn. Oberyn, who dutifully sits next to Edward’s lobster, Elyse.

She laughs politely, never too long, feeling all of Edward’s attention on her reactions with the weight of his hand on her thigh, marking his territory. So, she excuses herself to bed early, kissing Edward’s cheek and thanking Lord Asriel for the tales of his exciting exploits.

And, every night after, she allows her mind to replace the man who crawls into her bed with one who has a full head of thick, dark hair, and blazing blue eyes.

He finds her in the library. Naturally. But, it’s the state that she’s in that makes her feel foolish and exposed. She’s forgotten herself in her moments of solitude, thinking absently as a person. Thinking as herself, and dressing accordingly. There’s no show to put on, so she wears suspenders, a men’s sweater, and no shoes or socks. Her glasses perched on her nose, and a smudge of ink across her forehead. She eats chunks of apple cut from her pocket knife as she avoids getting sticky fingerprints on the engineering blueprints she inspects.

When she looks up he is smiling at her, the bare kind of an excited boy, not a man undressing her.

“Is that for the ice drill?” he asks, wanting to know the answer, not being rhetorical.

She nods, still recovering from being caught.

“I’d like to use it to build a cave system in the north. If we could make an arctic base, then I wouldn’t have to do supply runs so often while scouting the aurora," he explains. 

“Why not find an existing cave system as to not disturb the area and cause any seismic or snow instability?” she says. 

He shrugs, “I could do that, but I hate to be a slave to elements of such realities.”

They spend the afternoon digging through surveying reports and old maps before she finds it.

“Right here,” she prods the paper with a long nail, “There should be caves. If you’re lucky, then it’s over a volcanic vent which should naturally heat it. Geothermal is easier in cold climates, reduces the need for fuel.”

Asriel keeps a stone face, but his daemon, Stelmaria, paces in excitement, flicking her tail against Oberyn’s nose in thanks.

The afternoons that follow become something of a ritual, a shared forager’s lunch and poring over documents. And, even when Edward does suspect the time they spend together, he barges in to find them with noses in separate books, enjoying the companionable silence of the library.

“You read too much,” he tells her as they get ready for bed.

“Sorry, my love,” she says with a sweet smile and a kiss.

And, she lies awake fantasizing about watching his features melt in a volcanic vent. And, in the morning, she hides the bloody cuts on her palms.

* * *

It’s she who kisses Asriel first. She’s tired of batting her lashes and dropping hints so big they could help repair his airship. He is a red blooded man, he has looked at her as an object of lust. He can and should act on any of those inclinations, but he teases her in his respectful ignorance. And for that respect, she shoves him against the library’s globe and smothers his lips with her own.

Stelmaria, who has been lounging and staring at Oberyn across the room, pounces, dragging him against her body with her claws. He digs his own paws into the fur of her face and neck, growling low and deep in his throat. Asriel flips their positions, lifting her to sit on the edge of a nearby table. She wraps her legs around him instantly, trapping him between her thighs. Asriel shifts, testing the strength of her hold, then chuckling at the force of her embrace.

“Eager,” he says against her mouth.

She bares her teeth in a grin, choosing to answer by freeing his cock from his trousers.

* * *

Sex with Asriel is better than good, it’s satisfying. It’s not just the sex (and the sex is very good. The man knows how to use his pelvis, and when to use his tongue) it’s waking up with a pleasant ache, and her scratches on his back, and their daemons sleeping in a pile at the foot of the bed. (Stelmaria wrapped around Oberyn like he is the brass middle of her silver coin.) It’s debating frostbite over cold eggs and fruit, with her wrapped up in one of his shirts, and him stuffed into her robe. It's being heard when she speaks, whether it is a whisper or a shout. 

He sees her, all of her, the pieces she's painted over and hidden, and instead of recoiling, he hands her a slice of toast. He kisses the side of her head and says, “Thanks, Monster,” when she points out something terribly obvious he’s neglected to see.

She loves him. She thinks she does anyway. She thinks about him, when her mind wanders. Thinks about his arms, his smile, the one she claims as hers. That deep belly laugh. And how, when she hands him coffee in the morning--always crawling out of bed before him--he’ll taste it first them smile and say, “No arsenic today?”

Then she’ll laugh and shake her head.

“If I’m ever found dead before my time, I’ve written letters to all the right people saying it was you who did it,” he says with a smile and serious eyes.

“You give me far too much credit, Darling,” she smiles wickedly, leaning in close, “If I were to kill you, it would be to cut your rope on a climbing expedition.”

“Easier to excuse as an accident,” he says.

“And there are none out there who like you enough to investigate further,” she says, cracking a walnut.

“No, I suppose not. You’re the only one passionate enough to kill or avenge me,” he says.

It bothers her. Not that he sees the creature living under the painted doll facade, but that he’s right. No one is allowed to kill her Asriel but her. It’s a glaring weakness that will have to be revisited at a later date. Preferably, in a decade, after he’s her second husband.

* * *

There’s a baby. Of course there’s a baby. A complication to the narrative. A variable in her plan that means she will have to speed up the process of killing Edward. And, a precarious variable at that.

It is Asriel’s--though the dates are close enough to be safe. She knows it’s his, because her womb would not offer fertile soil up to Edward Coulter any more than her heart would. 

If she plays her hand correctly, then she will have the heir, the estate, and her lover all by the end of this. Edward will have suffered a tragic accident, and Asriel, a dear friend of them both, will provide comfort and support for her and the new baby. And, as she is a woman, and unable to take care of herself, and since Asriel is a bachelor, it would only be proper for him to marry her. The child will, of course, need a father as well as a mother.

He knows when he spots her, across the room at a gala. She’s on Edward’s arm, in an empire waisted golden dress, and laughing about nothing with Lady So-and-so. It’s Oberyn who informs her that Asriel looks like someone has just punched him in the head. They steal a moment alone when she is on her way to the kitchens to bark orders at the cooking staff.

“Marisa, you’re. . .” he gestures to her stomach.

(Is it mine? He's asking.)

Keeping an eye and an ear out for unwelcome observers, she says, “Pregnant. Why, yes, Lord Asriel. I’m sure you know how all of that works.”

(You know exactly when you did this, she's telling him with a sharp smile.)

His throat bobs, “Lord Coulter is a lucky man then.”

(Your husband won't like being a cuckold.)

“Is he?” she smiles.

(He won't be around to care.)

Ariel's posture changes, relaxed, but ready to strike. He nods coolly. 

* * *

She will accept all of her best machinations going to hell, but she will not take credit for the misfires. Edward was supposed to drunkenly fall down some stairs, or into the lake on their property, or off his horse. Since when did he have such impeccable balance?

Now she is disgraced, widowed, childless, and alone.

Childless. There was a parasitic little creature living inside her, then outside her. A creature whose only instincts were to shit, cry, and betray her mother. A creature with Asriel’s nose and tawny colouring, and Marisa’s jaw.

She remembers looking down at the little bundle and feeling. . . nothing. No motherly instinct, just annoyance that the thing would not stop crying. Yes, you little bastard, life is hard, it’s unfair, and leaving the warmth of Marisa’s body was the worst decision that could have been made.

Marisa has no attachment to the name Lyra. She’s prefer names like Lily, Evelyn, or Drusilla. But, she is only the one who carried the thing for most of a year, so her opinion is tertiary. 

She doesn’t keep it. She doesn’t name it. She barely gets to say goodbye. She sits in the dark to hide from the shame. The whispers of sinner and whore. All good will. All status, drained like water from a tub.

_ “Marisa, you have to eat, _ ” Oberyn plies her with dried fruit and nuts. 

She pretends not to hear him, instead, throwing a vase at the spot where he stands. 

He leaves in a haste. It feels like having her intestines pulled out. 

Each time he strays further and it's just another piece pulled out of her. Soon she will be a husk, free of viscera, free of emotion. Just an automaton walking around on a track. She’s earned this. She deserves it.

_ “Marisa, _ ” he will try again.

“Shut up,” she’ll hiss.

And eventually the silence in the house will snap. And Oberyn will have nothing left to say. And one will leave a room just as the other enters. They will be as strangers. Just two ghosts haunting the same house.

* * *

Her years of emotional starvation add to the learned literal starvation, and the baby fat just slides off. She's slim again, as if she never housed another living creature. It’s only little details that give it away. The scars above her womb from where her belly expanded, and the darkened shade of her nipples. There is a line between woman and mother and she has crossed it. Somewhere out there, a little thing wanders around with Marisa’s lungs and heart, but here. Here, the doll is perfected.

It’s been three years. Long enough for her to disappear into obscurity after the shame of her adultery. She could paint a pretty picture of her victimhood. Of herself as a less than enthusiastic participant, lured into it by Asriel. Of Edward as a cruel and neglectful man, her reaching for any comfort from a cold man.

Instead, she gets back to work. She returns to the north, because it has been abandoned by God and polite society alike.

Not because she wants to run into  _ him _ .

But, if she were to then. . .

Well.

The library is waiting for her, and her research along with it. She fixates, this time, on Sin. On its nature. On its beginning and its end, because Marisa is no fool. If she is to fall from grace with the blue blood aristocracy, then there is only one place that can return her to esteem.

“Dust,” she says to herself, copying the notes of the book into her own pages.

The door to the library opens.

“Just a mo’,” and she knows that voice.

Oberyn perks up, coming alive, so unlike the stuffed toy he’s been for the past years.

Asriel’s got more grey in his hair and beard. He stops once he’s spotted her.

“I need that book,” he’s brusque and to the point.

“I’m using it,” she folds her arms.

“Okay,” he turns heel and leaves.

She gnaws her lip, knowing he’s leaving her no choice but to follow or be abandoned.

She stays, having lost everything but her pride at this point.

It aches and it gnaws. Something still living inside her writhes.

_ “I miss her,”  _ Oberyn’s voice is hoarse with disuse.

Marisa doesn’t ask who he means, choosing instead to ignore him, and her own longing altogether.

The next time she sees Asriel again is at a minor party in Oxford. And for a moment her heart jumps. She feels pretty again. Desirable, with all the men crowding her, because of the reputation she’s got as a  _ whore _ . 

But Asriel ignores her, focused instead on the new woman on his arm. Blonde hair, grey eyes, and slim. She looks nothing like Marisa. Not even a replacement for her. The girl’s got a fucking poodle for a daemon.

But, even in Asriel’s interest, Stelmaria proves the better half by crossing the ballroom to brush past Oberyn. Tears gather behind Marisa’s eyes, so she laughs, pretending they’re mirth.

Asriel doesn’t find her on the balcony that night, standing on the edge with her heels in one hand and a glass of cognac in the other. No, instead Oberyn watches her from the door, waiting to see if they’ll both be dust before the night is through.

She’d like to say it’s something like love, or atonement that keeps her from jumping, but it’s spite. She will have her life back, and when she does, she will gouge the eyes from Asriel Belacqua’s skull. Then she will carve out his tongue, cut off his hands and his cock, and leave the mutilated monster to die of frostbite. And, her daughter will see this monstrosity and scream,  _ “Mummy! What is that thing?”  _ And, Marisa will tell her:  _ it’s just a bad dream. Go back to sleep, Lyra. _

* * *

A man is entitled to his estate. He is entitled to his legacy. Marisa Coulter has nothing, but she has a daughter. A daughter, who by all rights, it hers. Something she made. Something she can mould and shape in her own image. She deserves her legacy. And, she deserves her estate.

The Magisterium sits stone faced as she sells them freedom from sin in her rented suit and prudish haircut. 

They are, naturally, skeptical, but give her the funds to begin her project. She has the liquid capital. Now comes the research. A trip northward again, this time to visit the witches and ask about how they separate from their daemons.

_ “Looks like you’ve already mastered that yourself,” says a willowy, defiant woman. _

Marisa makes a note to shoot her later, once she has what she needs.

It’s just like an umbilical cord. The hideous tube stretched from her insides to her daughter’s feeding one life to the other.

But how to cut it?

She returns to the book on Dust, and so does Asriel. This time, he shoves her onto the desk and takes her from behind, hands carefully avoiding anywhere near her belly. With her face pressed against the table, she sees Stelmaria nuzzling and rolling with Oberyn. She’s gentle. She’s playful. She’s loving him. Asriel is just pounding away, making the table creak.

He breaks before she does, yelping and pressing his nose into the crown of her hair. Reaching down in front of her to stroke in apology. She claws at his wrist, holding him in place.

“I’m going to kill you,” she hisses.

“Do it then,” he barks back.

She whimpers on completion, furious tears splashing the desk. When she opens her eyes, Asriel is gone, and the book with him, leaving behind warmth, emptiness, and the smell of leather.

(This cycle goes on for years. He’ll ignore her twice, three times, only to arrive unannounced at a hotel she’s staying at for a late night fuck and no apology. And, she lets him every time. She hates that. That her weakness still gets to wander off on two legs after every encounter and find some grad student to pour himself into.)

Eureka is the General Oblation Board. Eureka is finding the right knife to cut that umbilical cord. Oh, if it had only existed when she was a girl, so she wouldn’t have to make herself sick at the sight of Oberyn, always skulking about the house looking like she’s just kicked him.

But, alas.

There are no willing test subjects. Well, there are a few. Those who will do anything for some warmth and a hot meal. The bodies need to be disposed of afterward, too traumatic at adulthood. Oh well. She knows a little bit about omelettes, and needing to break a few eggs.

(It’s a shame though, because she could lure men into the machine with a bat of her lashes and an implied blowjob. Children, who it does work on, are much less gullible.)

* * *

Her reward, after everything. After shredding what pieces of her and Oberyn’s goodness--if there ever was any--is a beautiful penthouse apartment and a request from Jordan College that she come and collect her bastard. Not their words, but what she takes from the black type on the telegram.

( _ Dear Mrs. Coulter, _

_ Here at Jordan College we have a young woman who would much benefit from your guidance and tutelage. Lyra has been a part of the college since girlhood, but as she is close to the transition to womanhood, she needs a mentor of the fairer sex. Attached is a recent photo of her and her daemon.) _

Something stirs in Marisa. Something thought dead. A bubble of excitement, and of fear.

Lyra has been an abstract concept. Some bargaining chip between her and Asriel. A noose around her neck. Salvation? It depends on the day.

Lyra has never been a girl though. Just a normal girl. A grubby little girl with Asriel’s nose and Marisa’s smile. One who gawks at Marisa’s beautiful clothes. 

She’s just a little girl who wraps her skirt around her knees like a dress. One who climbs without fear. One who smashes birds nests to see what happens.

And when she wraps her arms around Marisa, her heart returns to her chest. And is  _ aches _ . This thing, the creature in her arms, used to keep her up all night hiccuping, and now she looks at Marisa like she’s meeting an angel in person.

It’s love and it’s power and it’s so intoxicating that Marisa instantly needs to possess it. 

Possess  _ her _ . Little Lyra, who talks so reverently about Asriel. Of course. He would leave a girl like this alone in some stuffy college to die of boredom. He is, at least, consistent in disappointing the women in his life.

Lyra is so lonely. Well, except for the boy, and Marisa doesn’t like sharing. If Lyra is to be loved, it will be by her and only her. No boy. No Asriel.

She will be adored by all, how could she not be? But, only Marisa will know and love her.

Lyra. Lyra. Lyra.

She’s never had an obsession like this before. Poring over the schoolbooks and notes on the girl. Her history. The stone stair that split her forehead--an accident from treating the roofs like a playground. And, she feels fear, and phantom pain, and fondness.

“Little monkey,” she says aloud.

Oberyn looks at her, like she’s speaking to him.

“Lyra is,” she explains.

He sinks back into himself.

Lyra wrinkles her nose when she eats something she doesn’t like and Marisa wants to kiss the expression, but doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know how to love, only to seduce. To make the girl comfortable, and enamoured with her.

For now, it should be enough as she researches how to re-attach an umbilical cord between mother and daughter, since she’s mastered cutting the one between child and daemon.

She’s up, reading in bed, because it’s hard to sleep with the girl in the house. She sends Oberyn to watch her, and return to inform Marisa when Lyra has fallen asleep, so she can crawl into the room and watch the child’s chest rise and fall, timing her own in the same rhythm.

“Mrs. Coulter,” there’s a knock on her door.

Cautious and curious, Marisa opens the door. Lyra is standing there in her pajamas, the ones that are a few shades lighter than Marisa’s.

“What’s wrong, Lyra?” Marisa slips the mask back on.

Lyra’s all squinty and cute, “Pan says he hears something in the walls. I keep tellin’ ‘im it’s just the pipes, but it’s keeping us up.”

She’d throw Oberyn off the balcony if it wouldn’t kill her.

Unsure of how to proceed, her mouth gets ahead of her brain, “Do you need me to check for monsters?”

“Like Gobblers? Nah. Just tell ‘im that pies are loud.”

Pantalaimon, who she remembers just as well as she does Lyra in her infancy, keeps quietly annoyed with Lyra.

“Do you want to spend the night in here? I’m so used to the house’s creaks at night that I don’t hear any pipes.”

What did she just offer.

Lyra seems to consider that question herself.

“What do you think, Pan?”

Oberyn appears behind her mattress, daring to look hopeful that he might share the foot of the bed with his son.

“Yeah, let me just grab my pillow,” Lyra says.

Marisa opens her mouth to say she has plenty, but the girl jogs down the hall and back, holding the pillow close to her chest with some strain.

Marisa’s heart is pounding and she can’t stop swallowing as she peels the covers back. Lyra bounces in, something heavy hitting the mattress with her pillow and Marisa frowns. She’ll have to revisit that later.

“What are you readin’?” Lyra asks, once she’s settled in.

“Finance reports, nothing exciting I’m afraid,” Marisa tucks the papers away.

The quiet stretches between them, “Do you have any stories?”

And, Marisa realizes, her daughter hasn’t ever slept with someone like this before either.

“Let me see,” Marisa checks her bookshelf.

“I know that book, they have it at Jordan college. It’s supposed to be banned,” Lyra says, sitting up.

Marisa laughs, “It’s just a book, Lyra, what harm could it do?” then she still raises a finger to her lips to keep the secret. 

Her daughter is herself in miniature, so she’s just delighted to be benefiting from breaking the rules.

Marisa reads a story about jealous gods, a king who will bed any woman, animal, or puddle who catches his fancy, and his jealous wife who tears the world apart for it. Then she tells the story of the girl who no one believes. Then she tells the story about the god-king who eats his children so they will never destroy him, only to be destroyed by the inside.

This is when Lyra’s breathing gets deep and soft and her foot touches Marisa’s calf under the covers.

Marisa clicks off the light and presses a kiss to the scar on her daughter’s head.

She lies still, but not on the inside.

* * *

Her daughter runs away in the middle of a party, leaving Marisa and Oberyn gasping for air, lungs ripped out yet again.

And, drinking alone in the dark (again) she understands the god-king. It’s easier, keeping them inside forever, so they won’t take your guts with them when they go.

She is not still. Not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been obsessed with this woman since I was thirteen. She's a horrible monster, but she loves her baby. . . so like, muddy Kronos analogy I guess.
> 
> the crabs with human faces are called heikegani.


End file.
